The Off Topic Topic

[grumbler]

That one is funny in my experience, because I started off believing in "centrifugal force", then in physics class we were taught there is no such thing and that there is centripetal force, and then I read engineers discuss things and they use "centrifugal force" all over the place.  Turns out in certain contexts it's a useful way to think about things.

In my field the analogue would be "correlation is not causation".  When people start out not thinking about it, they probably implicitly believe that it is.  Then they get taught that "correlation is not causation", and suddenly they see anyone using correlation in any argument as a sign of ignorance.  Then you learn more and find out that while correlation is indeed not causation, in many contexts that truism is irrelevant, and that it's still very useful to establish correlation.

Centrifugal force is a useful fiction, but a fiction nonetheless. "Orwellian thinking" is another useful fiction.

[crazy canuck]

Just had a big tremor hit the lower mainland.